Implantable or insertable electrode systems allow physiologically important analytes, such as glucose or lactate, to be measured in a patient's body. Compared with processes where a sample of a body liquid is taken and is analyzed outside the body, such in vivo measurements provide a number of essential advantages, including especially the possibility to acquire measured values automatically and continuously.
In spite of those advantages measuring systems for in vivo monitoring of analyte concentrations have not been generally accepted in the market to this day, especially for portable applications such as the “home monitoring” application, where patients monitor their blood sugar level or some other analyte concentration outside of a hospital. This is due not least to the fact that the known portable measuring systems allow measurements of analyte concentration values over a time of several days, with the precision and reliability required for medical applications, only in exceptional cases.